Student Reflection - Ashley

This morning when I woke up I was filled with excitement because today was our first day at a new school- San Pablo. We traveled 9 miles down a very rocky road to get to the isolated village of San Pablo. Along the way we saw multiple banana farms with hundreds of bananas growing in each of them and we also experienced some bumps along the way (let’s just say the people in the back seats of the van went flying a few times). When we finally arrived the students at the school the students had big smiles on their faces and we couldn’t wait to get to know them and get to work.

The first thing we did was conduct reading assessments with each student in the school. We each assessed around five students in order to see if they needed to work on decoding or comprehension skills. Once all of the 115 students at San Pablo were assessed the UofL students broke into reading stations. About half of us led stations on comprehension and the other half led stations all about decoding/phonics. Each station lasted anywhere from 15-20 minutes each and once a group of students finished one station they moved to the next station in line.

My comprehension station focused on the book “Stellaluna” and taught the students how to identify the beginning, middle and end of a story. It was really fun because the students were able to actively participate by taking notes on their very own cut out Stellaluna (name of a bat).

During break time we brought out the soccer balls, beach balls and a jump rope. Just like home, the girls clung to the jump rope and mastered the skill very quickly and the boys darted towards the balls and were playing soccer and “catcher” (their version of tag) in an instant.

We then proceeded to eat lunch (the usual good ole’ PB&J sandwiches) in the church. We had multiple sandwiches left over and as a group decided that if we split up the sandwiches into ¼‘s we could hand out the leftovers to just about every student in San Pablo.

After lunch we played some more with the students and had the chance to interact with them. The students would forget to speak in English and would try to have conversations with us in their Mayan language. I had to tell them “speak in English; I don’t understand your Mayan”. They laughed and giggled at me and we continued to hit it off.

At three pm the school day was over and we all piled into the vans and headed back to the hotel. Overall today was wonderful and I cannot wait to experience another unique day at our new school tomorrow. I will leave you with this inspirational quote I found a few months ago:

“If you’re 22, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live, eat, and cook. Learn from them wherever you go. “~Anthony Bourdain